"At
the
time it was
fresh, daring
and influential, especially raising eyebrows in
the 1930s were the
scenes
of casual sex."

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

This erotic melodrama is directed by James Cruze
("The
Great Gabbo"/"The
Covered Wagon"/"Come On, Leathernecks!") and is set on
San Diego's
waterfront.
It's based on the best-selling book by Max Miller and
the screenplay is
by Wells Root. The story about an investigative
journalist is dated but
at the time it was fresh, daring and influential,
especially raising
eyebrows
in the 1930s were the scenes of casual sex and
Claudette Colbert
swimming
in the raw (though she's not seen in the buff, as it's
only implied).
It
concerns tough-minded, bachelor, aspiring novelist,
waterfront reporter
H. Joe Miller (Ben Lyon), trying to get the goods on a
rascal captain,
Eli Kirk (Ernest Torrence), whom he suspects of
smuggling illegal
Chinese
immigrants into the country. Miller convinces his
blustery hard-headed
city editor, Phelps (Purnell Pratt), to keep him on
the story while he
romances the unsuspecting free-spirited pretty
daughter of Eli's, Julie
(Claudette Colbert), to pump her for info. Naturally
he falls madly in
love with her, but has to face her when she learns he
was using her to
snag her dad.

Played against the background of the Depression and
the
black market,
it has Eli as the kindly single parent but the
sinister fisherman who
finds
there's more dough to be made fishing for shark than
tuna. He uses the
inside of the shark to smuggle in the Chinese. Julie
only thinks he's
bad
when drunk, as she's unaware of his darker side.

Hobart Cavanaugh plays the unemployed free-loader
reporter
pal of
Miller's, who while drunk provides some inane comic
relief. Though
Colbert
is not believable as a fisherman's daughter, she's
playful in her
two-week
romance with the rather stiff Lyon and gives the
agreeable but slight
film
enough energy to hold my attention.

It was made just before the Hays Code censored
explicit
sexiness.REVIEWED ON
5/20/2007
GRADE: B-